The Hatchetman

Twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money. Anyone who says it’s not is lying just plain and simple. In a town like mine that much money buys a lot of things and not the least of which is respect. And respect buys you a lot of other things too. Respect is power and when you’re in the meat grinder power’s everything.

I’ve been here in Bellview for almost six years. Everyone always says big cities got the crime, but I’ve been in both and it’s the small towns that got it figured out. Big cities got more cops, more witnesses, more suits, more attention. You get a town like this and all those problems just go away. Bosses like big cities for the amenities but what the suits don’t know is a lot of the money is kept out here. Easy to buy an entire police force in a town like this and you can do it with just favors most the time. A paid trip to the city with the family is usually enough to get a badge to look the other way when you need him to.

I was never anything special in this racket, but I cut my teeth in the streets of The Windy and I guess that counts for something. I wasn’t a hatchetman or anything like that. Actually, I never even carried a piece. Getting caught with a duffle full of dough is bad enough without putting a gun in the mix. Haven’t touched one since the war and I’m not ashamed to say I didn’t see much action there either. I only say that because everyone always asks.

I was more like a bagman. Back then money was moving in all places at all times. Just had to with the suits banging in doors and confiscating goods every chance they got. So I moved the money. I mean not alone, me and a whole team did this and this wasn’t a little bit of lettuce either. This was enough money to disappear entirely a hundred times over and live like a king. I think the boys up top knew some money would be skimmed here and there but one time this whole bag went missing and well, just glad it wasn’t my crew. They all disappeared but weren’t living like kings if you get me.

So I guess I impressed someone up there and I was moved down here to run a little pocket of this and that. Moved my wife and son here and settled in real nice. Got a place two blocks off Main. Two-story house with a spin tube dishwasher in the kitchen and two ovens in the wall. You ever heard of that? When Dorothy saw them she asked who the second wife was to go with the second oven. She kids like that a lot but she’s a good woman.

Anyway, that money. Like I said things have been good for a long time, at least right up until that money found its way to me two days ago. Last week I got a message on the blower that someone was coming to see me. Nothing unusual there. Guys come down all the time with messages or money or both. Didn’t think anything of it until I saw the car out front of the diner on Maple. Brand new Lincoln Continental with the suicide doors and windows darker than the black paint. A car like that doesn’t belong in Bellview and no one has ever come to see me in a car like that, so I knew this was something special.

Sully and I go way back to the beginning. After the war we both needed work and found our way in around the same time. Difference was he was more cut out for the business side of things. He has a mind like that, and it doesn’t hurt my feelings to admit I don’t. He’s never going to be a boss but works hard and has respect and let’s not forget what comes with respect. I kept that in mind when I slid into the booth across from him and took a sip from the cup of black he had waiting on me.

The short of it is changes never come easy. I knew things were dicey up north ever since that thing went sideways in Cuba last year and the suits started knocking down more doors when they were supposed to be knocking down less. The rumble was all up in arms over the Outfit but really all those newshawks were on the payroll, so I never worried too much about it. But now some changes needed to be made he told me. I guess the pressure from up top was getting a little tight and it was time to move the money again. He said Mooney would see to it I was taken care of after I closed things down here in Bellview. Then he pushed that leather satchel across the floor and dropped a tip on the table before walking out.

I knew not to look in a bag at a place like that. That’s the kind of move a green guy makes and gets busted with a whole wad of cash and a lot of bad excuses. I parked the car in the driveway at the home place and went through the side gate on the way to the shed out back. See, Dorothy doesn’t know what she doesn’t know, and she likes it that way and so do I. I never talk work on the blower in the house, and I never open a bag in the house either. First of all, in the least it’s work and work like that don’t belong in a home with a wife and impressionable kid. Secondly, I knew a guy that opened a bag just like this one in his living room. After he got a peek in there the whole house got remodeled and just thank his unlucky stars that his wife and kids were at the park at that moment.

Anyway, I shut the door and wasted no time opening the bag. I figure if there’s something in there that’s going to go ‘bang’ then there’s no use getting all suspenseful about it. I pulled out the stuff inside and it was pretty clear what this was going to be about. Shutting things down in Bellview was never going to be pretty. I’d seen plenty of ugly over the years to know that, but I never thought they’d be asking me to do it. Two stacks of scratch, a .38 caliber black snub nose, and a box of shells. Sully knew I hated these things and I’d need it I guess. And then that black notebook. Leather-bound and cross-tied with some twine.

I took to counting the scratch before I opened that book. Truth is everyone’s got a price for just about anything and I needed to know what I was working with here. Like I told you, twenty-thousand dollars is a lot of money, but it’s not so much money that I’d want anything to do with that snub nose on the table. I cut the string on that black notebook and opened it up to the first page. Account numbers. Down at the bottom was an address in Las Vegas and a name: ‘Tony Ferraro’. I heard some spitting here and there by the guys that operations in other towns were shutting down and moving to Vegas. We’d been pushing scratch to Vegas for a decade before I moved to Bellview so it shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.

That snub nose was still shining under the bulb over there on the table and so I knew page one wasn’t all there was. I flipped it over and I guess you’d say my heart sank. Names. Six names. No instructions, no ‘here’s why’. Just the names, and that gun over there. I checked the notebook to make sure there was nothing else and there wasn’t.

Those six names aren’t just names. They’re people I know. People I go to church with. People you know too. People that got no idea what they’re mixed up in and it doesn’t seem right I have to introduce them to something so final as a .38 for it. You have to understand it’s not like I can get on the horn and ask that someone else do it. A call like that is enough for a fitting in a Chicago overcoat and probably Dorothy and the boy too.

I hid that bag real good in the shed and went inside in time for a meat and potato dinner. Didn’t sleep that night. Just kept figuring this thing one way then the other. Any way I saw it, it ended up dirty. At best I’m pulling a trigger with good men on the other side of the barrel and that’s just not something I’m going to do. At worst my entire family ends up at the bottom of the Michigan and all the people on that list end up with us too. But it’s funny how even a little sleep can make a fuzzy picture clear.

So now here I am with you. Fact is, if I don’t take care of those names then I’m dead. My wife and son too. But I figure if I happened to get bumped trying to do what they want, the wife and kid will be spared and even looked after maybe. Seems possible enough I go to do a job and a guy gets the jump on me first. I think they’d buy that. There’s enough dough tucked under the mattress to get the family a new life down south of here somewhere. If the local police get their hands on that list you’ll end up dead too and the other five guys on page two right along with you. So make sure you take the list to the suits. I’d take it to The Lou instead of Chicago just to be safe. And be quick about it. Because before long Sully or someone else will be back to finish what they’ll think I died trying to start.

I figure if the suits get their hands on the list fast enough then you and the other five will get into WITSEC maybe. But here’s the kicker: you can’t tell them about this conversation. Stick to the story and it’ll be better for everyone. If you don’t it’ll mean the death of a good woman and an innocent child. I know you to be a good person. You met Dorothy and my boy. They’re good people. Don’t forget I could have just as easily had you looking down the barrel this morning. I picked you to do it because out of all those names we know each other the least. I figure that should make this easier for you than one of them, and plus I know you cut down plenty of guys in the war, O’Bannon told me so.

One other thing: when the dust settles down one day I need you to find my wife and my boy and if you’re sure no one’s listening or watching, tell them what I told you this morning. Newshawks will paint me as a killer and I guess if they do then this worked, but I need you to tell my family that I wasn’t any such thing. That I gave up my life for them, and for you and those other guys too.

So, let’s get on with it. Don’t just pop me once. You know no one ever does that if their heart’s really pumping. And don’t make a thing of it, the suspense doesn’t help either one of us. Ready when you are.